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US tech firms pledge at White House to bear costs of energy for datacenters

185 points by geox 8mo ago

deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]
stevefan1999 8mo ago
Stealing from the people; enriching myself
techblueberry 8mo ago
[flagged]
- thejazzman 8mo ago
  considering how we uphold treaties im not sure the terminology matters one way or the other
- vjvjvjvjghv 8mo ago
  It's a PR exercise that makes both the companies and the administration feel good. Not more. There will be no or just cosmetic change.
- AdieuToLogic 8mo ago
  Using Claude to provide a legal definition of "pledge" is unconvincing at best. > What are the legal protections of a “pledge”? To answer that question is to first agree upon the legal definition of "pledge": pledge v. to deposit personal property as security for a personal loan of money. If the loan is not repaid when due, the personal property pledged shall be forfeit to the lender. The property is known as collateral. To pledge is the same as to pawn. 2) to promise to do something.[0] Without careful review of the document signed, it is impossible to verify which form of the above is applicable in this case. > A pledge is a public commitment or statement of intent, not a binding legal contract. This very well may be incorrect in this context and serves an exemplar as to why relying upon statistical document generation is not a recommended legal strategy. 0 - https://dictionary.law.com/Default.aspx?selected=1544 https://dictionary.law.com/Default.aspx?selected=1544
  - techblueberry 8mo ago
    Wait, we know it’s not your definition, because it’s inapplicable.
    - AdieuToLogic 8mo ago
      > Wait, we know it’s not your definition ... Of course it is not "my definition", as I cited the source of it. > ... because it’s inapplicable. Take that up with law.com.
      - staticman2 8mo ago
        Your goal seemed to be to fact check Claude. I'm not sure why your failure to do so should be taken up with law.com? Law.com's first definition is inapplicable. That leaves us with the second definition, which says nothing about whether a pledge is legally binding.
        AdieuToLogic 8mo ago
        > Your goal seemed to be to fact check Claude. No, this is not my goal. My goal was to illuminate that Claude is a product which produces the most statistically relevant content to a prompt submitted therein. > I'm not sure why your failure to do so should be taken up with law.com? The post to which I originally replied cited "Claude" as if it were an authoritative source. To which I disagreed and then provided a definition from law.com. Where is my failure? > Law.com's first definition is inapplicable. From the article: The pledge includes a commitment by technology companies to bring or buy electricity supplies for their datacenters, either from new power plants or existing plants with expanded output capacity. It also includes commitments from big tech to pay for upgrades to power delivery systems and to enter special electricity rate agreements with utilities.[0] > That leaves us with the second definition, which says nothing about whether a pledge is legally binding. To which I originally wrote: Without careful review of the document signed, it is impossible to verify which form of the above is applicable in this case. 0 - https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/mar/04/us-tech-companies-energy-cost-pledge-white-house https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/mar/04/us-tech-comp...
- SpicyLemonZest 8mo ago
  I don't think there's any mechanism in US law for anyone to make a binding promise about terms they plan to include in contracts they might sign with unspecified local governments in the future. Congress could pass a new law requiring it, of course, but I think we all understand that this would not accomplish the administration's real goal of letting Trump prove he's the specialest boy and everyone has to give him what he wants.
  - glaucon 8mo ago
    | Congress could pass a new law requiring it, of course, but I think we all understand that this would not accomplish the administration's real goal of letting Trump prove he's the specialest boy and everyone has to give him what he wants. ... plus it would require "tech firms" to actually modify their behaviour and that would never do.
- Freedom2 8mo ago
  I'd be cautious about using Claude, given that they're designated as a supply chain risk by the US Government. Why not use the approved and officially certified ChatGPT instead?
  - XorNot 8mo ago
    I'm assuming there's a missing /s tag there.
- mattas 8mo ago
  Pledges are somewhere between a pinky swear and a high five.
  - washadjeffmad 8mo ago
    Fingers crossed spit shake
- drak0n1c 8mo ago
  Most forms of company civic greatness in the past were essentially pledges, much of the time unspoken. It's certainly possible, we don't need to be cynical.
  - techblueberry 8mo ago
    The thing about the old days is, they’s the old days. And yes this particular group of professional liars provide every reason to be cynical.
  - magicalist 8mo ago
    > Most forms of company civic greatness in the past were essentially pledges, much of the time unspoken. You're looking at the the conditional the wrong way. You want to look at how often pledges lead to "company civic greatness" (or even, you know, anything net positive) to start guessing at the value of a given pledge.
- deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
- lurk2 8mo ago
  You can just use a traditional search engine for this. I have no interest in reading your LLM output.
- AnthonyMouse 8mo ago
  > Wait a “pledge”? What are the legal protections of a “pledge”? That's the boring part until you look at what they're promising to do. It's not as if existing data centers were getting power by sending a masked rogue to climb the utility pole, tap the lines and bypass the electric meter. Paying for electricity is the thing they were going to do anyway. Likewise, paying for "new generation capacity" is the thing they were probably going to do regardless, because colocating large data centers with power plants saves the expense of power transmission which lowers their costs. And as the article alludes to, the real question is when? In general you can build a data center faster than you can build a power plant, which is exactly the reason data centers can cause short-term electricity prices to increase. They temporarily cause demand to exceed supply until supply has time to catch up. So on the one hand the whole issue is kind of meh because it was only ever going to be a temporary price increase anyway, and on the other hand having them build power plants at the same rate anybody else is building power plants doesn't actually change anything or address the temporary shortfall. (If you really want to solve it, find a way to build power generation capacity faster.) And then it doesn't matter if you can enforce the promise because they're just promising to do things they were going to do anyway.
  - mr_toad 8mo ago
    > And as the article alludes to, the real question is when? In general you can build a data center faster than you can build a power plant, which is exactly the reason data centers can cause short-term electricity prices to increase. Musk is bringing turbines in on trailers. They’re not even bothering with permits. This is getting really wild west. https://electrek.co/2026/03/03/elon-musk-xai-data-center-undoing-tesla-climate-gains/ https://electrek.co/2026/03/03/elon-musk-xai-data-center-und...
pcdoodle 8mo ago
[dead]
cs702 8mo ago
"The invisible hand" of free markets has become truly invisible...
fulafel 8mo ago
Does it include externalities (co2 emissions)? Increasing natural gas generation is of course disastrous policy with a major death toll from the climate disaster, there needs to be a rampdown of fossils use and production.
- deaux 8mo ago
  Strange downvotes for a relevant question.
- warkdarrior 8mo ago
  There are no such things as CO2 emissions in this administration. Your AI chatbots will be powered by clean coal and you'll enjoy it!
  - cyrusradfar 8mo ago
    /s this guy gets it. Thank you, finally speaking my language
  - rob74 8mo ago
    They have a cute mascot, so it can't be that bad: https://www.msn.com/en-us/lifestyle/lifestyle-buzz/meet-coalie-the-cute-mascot-of-beautiful-clean-coal/ar-AA1VTlDY https://www.msn.com/en-us/lifestyle/lifestyle-buzz/meet-coal... Actually, the tweet quoted in the article is firmly in the "you can't make this $%&/ up" category...
  - thegreatpeter 8mo ago
    So you believe Microsoft will start opening up coal plants again and not nuclear?
    - dathinab 8mo ago
      Nuclear power is a pain to build and maintain and un-build once it gets to old to reliable run it (the later part is commonly overlooked in cost calculations). It is also a ~50 year investment. This makes it not very attractive for companies and is why most nuclear power is state sub-ventioned. Theoretically the US had something similar to a state bank to help companies to finance exactly such projects, but Trump/DOGE defounded it for publicity reasons which makes it even less likely for private nuclear power plants. Many "we will use nuclear power" statements do rely on mini reactors. But AFIK pretty much all mini reactor projects have ended in dead ends so far. With promised at best working out on paper (and quite often not even there). So my guess is: They will claim they want to use Nuclear and might even intend to do so. But in the end look at their balance sheets and risk calculation and go "nah, lets do coal/gas/oil". There probably will be some single public co-investment into a nuclear power plant which "happens" to also be government sponsored to keep up the pretense.
deadbolt 8mo ago
We're all gonna end up paying for this and everyone involved knows it.
- beloch 8mo ago
  Public investment yields private dividends.
  - Xunjin 8mo ago
    “Socialize the losses, privatize the profits”.
- testing22321 8mo ago
  I covered my house in solar panels so it’s all irrelevant now. Soon I’ll get a used EV and cover the garage in panels too so I don’t have to care about wars causing surges in gas prices either.
mcs5280 8mo ago
Non-binding and voluntary = a bunch of lip service
Drunkfoowl 8mo ago
[dead]
SilverElfin 8mo ago
Do they pledge the costs of noise pollution and damage to water sources? Let’s be honest - these pledges are theater that reflects an agreement between tech oligarchs and the Trump administration. The pay the bribes via donations or whatever, and get back this deceptive theater show.
powerpcmac 8mo ago
The only people who believes corpo jackoffery these days are either boomers or people investing their remaining money in big line go up
h4kunamata 8mo ago
This is USA so we all know that those techs companies won't pay a cent back at the end, but the population will.
- bpodgursky 8mo ago
  The tech companies don't really have any issue paying for the capacity, this is a negligible cost compared to the compute capital, they just want streamlined regulatory approvals to bring the plants online.
  - NegativeK 8mo ago
    > The tech companies don't really have any issue paying It reduces profit.
    - bpodgursky 8mo ago
      Wrong, using grid power without adding capacity will result in tech companies paying more for electricity too. They want to add capacity.
      - softfalcon 8mo ago
        Are you absolutely sure they don't want us to add the capacity for them with a pathway for further government subsidies? Almost everything in tech has been subsidized in one way or another via tax avoidance schemes or outright lobbying and manipulation of the market. Why would this be any different?
7thpower 8mo ago
Even if the pledges are in good faith, people are being naive about how utilities work. The general goal for utilities has been to pursue the next “thing” and work toward some sort of regulation to lock in demand, which can be used as a lever to seek price increases and consolidate. If there’s margin to be had, the utilities will find a way, and prices will go up either way.
miyoji 8mo ago
You can read the actual pledge at [0]. The executive order regarding it is at [1]. There's some speculation in the comments about what is or isn't in the pledge. I recommend reading it yourself. [0] https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/2026/03/ratepayer-protection-pledge/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/2026/03/ratepayer-protec... [1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2026/03/ratepayer-protection-pledge-proclamation/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2026/03/rate...
- AdieuToLogic 8mo ago
  It is important to remember that clarifying the legal implications of "pledge" is entirely different than supporting and/or defending this instance of its usage. One can do the former whilst repudiating the latter and remain logically consistent.
  - trinsic2 8mo ago
    I'm not understanding why clarifying the legal implications is important if it's a smoke screen for everyone involved doing what they are going to do anyway. It seems more like a distraction away from the real problems.
- dsl 8mo ago
  It all seems like a backdoor to let tech companies build power generation on site without all the red tape and sell the excess power to consumers. This indirectly allows them to offload some of the fixed operational costs onto consumers. We just approved the first nuclear plant in 20 years to a company owned by Bill Gates and in a state that has basically nothing but farmland and a Microsoft datacenter. This absolutely cannot backfire. /s
  - simianwords 8mo ago
    What’s wrong with this?
    - ipaddr 8mo ago
madhacker 8mo ago
Trump helping tech bros sell more data centers. A pledge is moronic. You pay for what you use since time immemorial. Don't need to redefine existing words with new meaning.
dolphinscorpion 8mo ago
As long as they promised. Their word is golden
bitwize 8mo ago
Some towns in my state are already complaining about the noise from turbines supplying on-site power to a data center that's been built here. They're keeping people up at night. I'm broadly supportive of a "techie go home" movement.
otterley 8mo ago
I find the whole thing a little odd. They’re basically pledging to pay their electricity bills. So what? So does every business. Saying they’re going to pay for generation and transmission adds little. That’s already baked into the charges! It’s like saying they’re going to finally pay for the farmers to grow the produce and the drivers to get the produce to market when they buy apples--as though spontaneous generation and teleportation was ever an option.
- simianwords 8mo ago
  They are pledging to not only pay for their own bills but rather increase the supply of electricity itself. This will reduce retail electricity prices. This mean retail consumers are paying less for electricity than what they would have paid if not for the pledge.
  - podgorniy 8mo ago
    What if they pay own bills (why is this even a subject of discussion?), increase supply (formally), but electricity prices still go up anyway? Just curios if scenario from my descrition even possible...
    - simianwords 8mo ago
      that could happen because the demand could rise even more.
- ZeroGravitas 8mo ago
  An actual problem was them trying to avoid paying. They'd ask the utilities to make Gigawatts of energy available over the next two decades and the utilities would say "No problem, just sign here and agree to pay for us building out the grid to support that". Then the AI companies said "No we only want to pay for energy if we actually use it, if we go bust or decide not to use the energy in a couple of years we want you to charge all the others consumers to recoup that cost". No idea if that's addressed here. I'm assuming not. It was never clear if that reflected uncertainty about future demand or of they just like shifting costs and risk onto other people whenever possible. edit: the pledge references this problem, whether it actually solves it I don't know.
burnt-resistor 8mo ago
Like trickle down economics? Fool me once ...
yanhangyhy 8mo ago
It feels like ordinary people are becoming increasingly unnecessary. With AI, data centers, and big corporations, they don’t really need ordinary people anymore apart from their own employees. Capitalists only need robots and artificial intelligence to serve them, and ordinary people could just be put in zoos for display.
- DeathArrow 8mo ago
  >Capitalists only need robots and artificial intelligence to serve them That doesn't make sense because robots and AI won't have money to buy goods and services.
  - wolvoleo 8mo ago
    True but they will focus their market on the every enriching 0.1% that will have all the money.
  - KptMarchewa 8mo ago
    The capitalists realized that if they literally starve the working class there will be revolution. But if they produce enough so they can sustain (barely) rest of the people with 1% output while they consume 99%, it will be okay. So don't worry, you'll have basic ~~income~~ soylent green.
  - fragmede 8mo ago
    People have already hooked up Stripe accounts to OpenClaw instances, so AI's currently buying and selling goods and services.
  - mrguyorama 8mo ago
    Capitalists don't care about money. Capitalists collect money for it's power in a capitalist system. If they get "AI" and industrial robots, they don't care that nobody can buy their products anymore because they never cared about selling products in the first place. Right now capitalists loathe that they can "only* collect a 10-50% return on the things "they build", and the rest of the value has to go to the consumer. They want nothing more than getting rid of that "waste", and just having their personal factories create whatever they want and their personal farms making whatever they want and we all just fucking die.
campuscodi 8mo ago
I've read so many of these pledges before.... tl'dr: no, they won't
throawayonthe 8mo ago
oh well if they pledge it's okay then!
- mr_toad 8mo ago
  They’re pledging to do what they were doing anyway. No one with any sense is building large data centers and assuming the grid will supply the energy.
  - harimau777 8mo ago
    Isn't that contradicted by the fact that data centers are increasing electric prices in the areas they are built? It seems to me that either the data centers are drawing power from the grid or the utilities are gouging people. Either one should be stopped.
  - bdangubic 8mo ago
    move to northern virginia - the capital of data centers - and see what happens to your energy bills…
bob1029 8mo ago
We should be focusing on how to build large turbines and transformers more quickly. A lot of transmission projects are blocked on equipment. There are warehouses full of photovoltaics that we cant use because of other industrial bottlenecks. We can build an entire PV plant before we can obtain a single custom transformer for a substation.
- ourmandave 8mo ago
  Fear not citizen! Ya boi Elon got you covered with the new Megablock. Ta da! It's 3 Megapaks wired together with a transformer. Now that's innovation. See? Without billionaires, who would save us from billionaires? Tesla’s Megablock: Breaking the Transformer Bottleneck https://www.rebellionaire.com/post/tesla-megablock-transformer-bottleneck https://www.rebellionaire.com/post/tesla-megablock-transform...
mentalgear 8mo ago
Oh the "pledges" - tell me again how the Billionaire's Giving Pledge - the ultimate "pinky promise" of the 1% - is going? Launched in 2010 by Bill Gates, Melinda French Gates, and Warren Buffett, it was sold as a historic shift in philanthropy. Fast forward to 2026, and the data suggests it’s been more of a "Wealth Preservation Society" than a massive wealth redistribution event. This will be just as trustworthy. We need laws - not merely rhetoric pledges !
nixass 8mo ago
Can I pledge to pay taxes?
throwaw12 8mo ago
> The agreement is meant to help mitigate concerns that big tech’s datacenters are driving up US electricity costs for homes and small businesses Exactly opposite will happen. Reason is, when Big Tech is paying huge amounts of money to contractors to build those power generation facilities and service companies to service it, they will abandon servicing other facilities (remember how Micron dropped consumer RAMs last year because of enterprise demand) or require higher pay from everyone else
- thegreatpeter 8mo ago
  So what’s the solution? No data center? Let the current landscape of power companies operate as is?
  - throwaw12 8mo ago
    Let's make some assumptions first: 1. DCs must be built anyway 2. You can't take away energy from households (3). Highly preferred that you are not going to impact cost negatively to households (otherwise why we have this discussion) based on these assumptions, solution I see is, BigTech subsidising energy costs for 10 years for nearby households (area will be geofenced, e.g. in the radius of 50km), subsidy will be based on the prices outside of that radius. e.g. if you everyone outside of closest DC pays 1$ and in the radius prices become 1.5$, 0.5$ will be covered by BigTech and they're also responsible & pay to setup the system to automatically include everyone in subsidy program, not like you need to apply Also BigTech is not going to build the power generation plants, it must be built by existing processes to minimize impact on pricing
    - PunchyHamster 8mo ago
      Many problems with it: * power generation is not local in most of the cases. You'd be still fucking energy market to anyone outside it * power is also used by companies people actually want. Even if household power cost wont chance thanks to that approach, the price for power for every single business around will increase. * similarly any other manufacturing business will cost more. In essence, the AI boom will reduce profit margin of every single business that has electric power as significant cost in the production. Which is a lot of industries. "Making AI pay more for its useless power draw" is nice idea but it is pretty hard to realise. Unless we start outright denying connection to power grid but that's pretty dangerous political precedent to set.
Joel_Mckay 8mo ago
Much like the price of RAM, SSD, and GPU. The ballooning data-center energy consumption costs have already broken the middle class economic-loop Westinghouse electric drove in the 1950s. Some are seeing their utility bills double. People are not voluntarily going to build things that make less profit. It is a suckers bet assuming the unscrupulous will grow a conscience. =3
NoLinkToMe 8mo ago
I've seen Musk note in an interview that at year-end the bottleneck will not be CPU/RAM etc, but electricity. And new powerplants are backlogged for years. That's why he wants to go into space (10x solar potential because you don't have a day/night cycle, no clouds, no dust/rain, no temperature loss, no orientation issues, and no atmosphere reducing solar). To me it seems ridiculous, for one because sending 150kg to space costs about $500k, and this is about the weight of a solar installation that costs $800 to install and generates about $1000 worth of electricity across 20 years at utility wholesale prices. But suppose it was cheaper and viable, and earth-electricity was indeed capped, you could argue (if you believe the hype) that developing AI is an existential arms-race objective for US/China. But from what I've understood that's just not the case at all. Something like 170+ coal plants are scheduled to be decommissioned, and the average coal and gas plant runs at 40-50% of capacity, because wind/solar is eating their lunch (cheaper marginal $ per kWh). i.e. there is so little demand that these plants keep using less capacity and shutting down superfluous plants. You'd think if experts believed electricity was going to be a bottleneck, that venture capital / AI companies, or even traditional capital, would be buying up plants or signing guaranteed-usage contracts. But it doesn't seem to be the case.
- Xunjin 8mo ago
  The point of your whole argument is that “financial experts” are always rational and are not affected by bubbles, it took months from energy experts talking with media/investors to the Big Tech would start talking about “energy crisis”. In fact, Nadella publicly stated that he has a large amount of hardware in inventory that has already been purchased but cannot be utilized due to insufficient energy.
  - NoLinkToMe 8mo ago
    So why did Nadella not pour a few billion into buying the 50% capacity that the average coal/gas plant has spare, that they're not running due to insufficient demand?
dev1ycan 8mo ago
Everything that the white house says atm, they do the opposite.
dathinab 8mo ago
which means nothing because no one believes there are legal consequences if they don't and there are a lot of ways to doge it even if there where a reliable government in place like especially if they do what they have been doing recently (run their own generator, build their own power planes) a lot of this cost is implicit and as such very dogeable. E.g. higher cost for gas power planes for other due to major increase of demand, higher medical cost due to more air pollution, higher fuel prices, etc. etc. (not even speaking about anything climate change).
- cucumber3732842 8mo ago
  >like especially if they do what they have been doing recently (run their own generator, build their own power planes) a lot of this cost is implicit and as such very dodgeable. E.g. higher cost for gas power planes for other due to major increase of demand, higher medical cost due to more air pollution, higher fuel prices, etc. etc. (not even speaking about anything climate change). And it's not just data centers, it's all sorts of industry. My local gravel and concrete plants run their "big stuff" off generators because the cost of the utility drop for their amperage doesn't make sense. And nobody will connect the dots between these choices and the requirements we've saddled utilities with. They're spinning up generator not because it's cheaper per watt, but because they're not operating on the 40yr timeline you need to be in order for the red tape you have to go through to put in permanent infrastructure to pencil out. I'm an abutter for a utility project and I've gone to the meetings for and it's an absolute massive boondoggle. My energy bill is going to reflect god knows how many hundreds of billable hours it takes for these hired lawyers and engineers to prove to the system that they're not gonna fuck over any endangered frogs by widening the cut to meet some industry standard that changed over the past N year and dumping culverts and fill in some places where streams criss cross it. Literally nobody involved cares. The abutters don't care. The town wants it to go forward because it's all trivial and it's not like it won't be their ass if they block an upgrade to industry standards and something happens. The system is just going through the motions. The city engineer grills them about petty bullshit because it's literally his job. They know he will and they have the answers but he makes a show out of the subjective things. Ditto for the conservation commissioner. It's like the Israel missiles meme. One side is my tax dollars and the other side is my energy bill. We're all doing this because some slimy politicians wanted to pander to some shortsighted big picture ignoring environmentalists 50yr ago and beurocacy has perpetuated and grown itself since. No public interest is served by this. And the cherry on top is that at the margin, we get shit like generators that don't need to exist because the cost of the alternative is driven up to the point the fuel inefficient (and also dirty) solution makes sense.
jmyeet 8mo ago
This is really a state law issue and there's really no solution for spiralling energy costs other than nationalizing utilities or otherwise making them into state or municipal entities, much like municipal broadband. Take the case of Duke Energy in North Carolina, which illegally raised rates too much. Utilities prices are supposedly regulated but utilities work around this by simply moving costs to things they can charge whatever for (eg transmission costs vs energy costs). The NC Court of Appeals ruled that Duke Energy's actions were illegal BUT there would be no refunds for customers [1], in part because lawmakers passed a law to allow them to do this retroactively [2]. Also, if Duke Energy had to repay customers they can simply raise prices to recoup those costs even though the money was improperly charged in the first place. So consumers will keep paying for the infrastructure to connect up these data centers and will keep subsidizing the ongoing energy costs. [1]: https://www.wcnc.com/article/news/local/no-refunds-for-duke-energy-customers/275-278564ea-d712-464e-b86f-cf57a7ebc001 https://www.wcnc.com/article/news/local/no-refunds-for-duke-... [2]: https://sustaincharlotte.org/press-release-nc-lawmakers-override-veto-to-pass-energy-bill-that-raises-costs-for-households-and-eliminates-dukes-2030-climate-target/ https://sustaincharlotte.org/press-release-nc-lawmakers-over...
LunaSea 8mo ago
The same way Nvidia "pledged" $100B to OpenAI?
cainxinth 8mo ago
Does a “pledge” have more or less weight than a pinky promise?
- ModernMech 8mo ago
  Depends, were their fingers crossed behind their backs or not?
motbus3 8mo ago
1y from here they will be talking how nuclear facilities are necessary
FpUser 8mo ago
>"The pledge includes a commitment" Pledge my ass. It is either law mandating those massive datacenters absorb the cost with heavy penalties for non compliance or it is just BS talk (what it seems to be at the moment)
Havoc 8mo ago
Like Musk just set up his own turbines regardless of what laws say I can see how big tech is enthusiastic about freestyling this. Eh sorry I mean bear the cost
blitzar 8mo ago
I too pledge to bear costs of energy I use. I was unaware it was optional.
- chasd00 8mo ago
  hah yeah that's pretty funny. "you can count on us to pay our electricity bill!" - tech companies.
Arubis 8mo ago
I will take this as seriously as any other promise issued at the White House in this regime.
HumblyTossed 8mo ago
I don't believe them. I don't trust corporations. At all. I look back at all the broken promises of corporations like AT&T, all while doing massive stock buy backs, and I simply don't want to hear their bullshit anymore.
randusername 8mo ago
We are creating the final boss of tragedy of the commons. I used to think we were progressing up an exciting tech tree. That seems naive now. Water, land, energy, the soundscape, intellectual property that incentivizes the dissemination of good ideas, digital networks of information and self-expression, perhaps even the economic value of expertise itself are all being sacrificed in the now for promises of utopia in the future. Precious eggs to give to those promising a utopian omelet, eventually.
imchillyb 8mo ago
The way to enforce this would be to provide US citizens with free electric and charge companies only. That will never happen, but would prevent we the people from bearing these costs directly.
- PunchyHamster 8mo ago
  It would just make other industries subsidize AI datacenters
pacerwpg 8mo ago
I don't care about pledges. Pledges mean nothing.
koolba 8mo ago
We already charge different rates for residential vs industrial water usage. Why not do the same here and simply charge them more? The state could also impose a direct data center surcharge on their usage.
- PunchyHamster 8mo ago
  Coz that fucks up every industry, even the ones actually useful to people.
Razengan 8mo ago
Wait a minute, so who else was paying the bills?
yuliyp 8mo ago
None of what they're pledging is much of a change from how they've already been operating: - They already invest in new power plants and connection infrastructure when they bring in new datacenters - Electricity for datacenters is based on capacity rather than actual usage - They already have backup generators at most datacenters that they can run during outages. It wouldn't be much work to allow those to feed power back into the grid in extraordinary circumstances - They generally use local contractors to build them for practicality purposes anyway. This is just some fancy PR and nothing else.
Jordanpomeroy 8mo ago
Cool. So they’ll build and operate gas turbines (or probably contract operations to do so) and then drive demand on the natgas, as well as over burden the gas delivery networks.
drooby 8mo ago
The training data commons is to AI what oil reserves are to petroleum economies: a collectively generated resource of immense commercial value. Every book written, every forum post answered, every photo shared, every line of code contributed... billions of people built the knowledge base that makes these models work. Without that collective human output, AI is nothing. Alaska and Norway understood something critical when oil was discovered: if you don't assert collective ownership of the resource before private companies capture all the value, you never will. Alaska amended its constitution. Norway built the largest sovereign wealth fund on earth. Both were acts of people saying "this belongs to us, and we deserve a return on its extraction." We are in exactly that window right now with AI. The resource is being extracted at an incredible pace and almost all the value is flowing to a handful of companies. The longer people wait to assert sovereign ownership over the collective intelligence that makes AI possible, the harder it becomes. If you think this is crazy, ask yourself what’s actually crazier: demanding a share of the value built on your collective labor, or watching trillions of dollars get extracted from it and saying nothing. the idea of Alaskans getting a check just for existing sounded crazy too, right up until it didn’t.
- drooby 8mo ago
  if you assert ownership over physical infrastructure, the data centers just move to another country or eventually to space. But the model is built on us. You can move the server anywhere you want. You can’t escape the fact that everything inside it came from human minds. That’s an ownership claim no one can relocate away from.
  - rybosworld 8mo ago
    > the data centers just move to another country or eventually to space The same line of reasoning that purports billionaires will flee if their taxes go up. Spoiler alert: they don't. Also, data centers in space is not a serious idea. It's been beaten to death that this isn't economical. People like Musk are proposing that as a possibility for the sole reason of keeping regulation away. "Well if you regulate us we will just move into space". They won't because they can't because physics.
buellerbueller 8mo ago
Please Democrats don't fuck up the midterms.[1] Take the house and start legislating in favor of the humans. [2] [1] Narrator: they will [2] Narrator: they won't
- trinsic2 8mo ago
  Our whole system is a binary carrot and stick. Im not sure we are going to see much change when/if democrats return to power. IMHO politics is manufactured to keep the people placated while the people in power to continue business as usual. If you want real change there has to be some kind of movement from grassroots that ends citizens united and starts enforcing anti-trust legislation independent of party politics. I was looking at this one organization[0], they want to do a constitutional amendment. At this point, I cant disagree with them, but with this administration, I don't know what good its going to do. [0]: https://americanpromise.net/our-plan/ https://americanpromise.net/our-plan/
Aboutplants 8mo ago
Most of these Data centers will be powered by Natural Gas, which flows from production through interstate pipelines, which already are fully subscribed meaning there isn’t any space left. As these data centers come online they will suck supply from these interstate pipelines, drastically increasing prices for all other forms of Natural gas usage (including residential power generation). This has a direct impact on prices for the end user and there is nothing that can be done in time to facilitate this from not occurring. Building pipelines is a long and arduous process and one that will not be done in time to reasonably accommodate the increase in natural gas demand presented by these data centers.
youknownothing 8mo ago
That still doesn't necessarily mean that prices won't be impacted indirectly. Let's say Amazon (or any other AI behemoth) builds a mini-nuclear plant to feed the electricity of their data center (as has been touted). Let's say every one follows suit. That implies an increase in the demand of uranium, which means an increase in price, which means an increase in the costs of the other nuclear plants, which is translated to higher electricity costs. One could say "use renewables", but even that has externalities: that means an increase in demand for solar panels, or wind turbines, or the labour to maintain them, which again leads to an increase in prices.
specialist 8mo ago
Terrific if it happens. I may even ignore the AI (valuation) bubble for the duration. David Roberts (https://volts.wtf https://volts.wtf) has repeatedly noted that AI companies need the power, need it now, and have the capital to get it. So he (and others) advocate that Big Tech fund the grid improvements and new power generation. Point #1 Virtual Power Plants Roberts advocates adopting virtual power plants (VPPs). Think grid of grids, like the internet is a network of networks. Think peer-to-peer energy sharing. VPPs unlock dynamic load shifting, two-way energy sharing (think of all those roof top solar panels and powerwalls), and therefore -- most importantly -- reduces peak demand on a grid which will allow greater utilitization. IIRC: our grids currently operate at 30% capacity (to accommodate rare peak demand events). Grid enhancement techs plus VPPs can boost that to 80% or higher. Reducing the urgency for building more transmission and distribution infra. (In the short term; we still need to greatly embiggen our grid(s).) It'd be kinda amazing if the urgency to build more data centers mooted the incumbent's (utilities, regulators) opposition to improving our grid(s), thereby benefiting everyone everywhere. Tangent: there's a backlog of grid enhancing technologies available, just waiting for funding and incentives to line up. Tangent: VPPs also enable new financial products, which will further accelerate electrification (of All The Things). Point #2 Solar + Battery Solar + battery is the fastest, cheapest way to get new power generation. More so every year. Yes, we still need to massively invest in All The Things to reach Net Zero and beyond. Wind, geothermal, nuclear (fission and fusion), hydro, every flavor of storage, de-carbonize industry and agriculture, conservation, rewilding, and everything else. But at this moment in time, today, we need gigawatts of new generation and the grid that can support it. That means solar + battery. Aside, IIRC, data centers are projected to demand just 5% our electricity supply. So society will be the net beneficiaries (on this axis). Were Big Tech to fund the generation and grid that we need, maybe society will indulge some of Big Tech's less egregious offenses. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indulgence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indulgence Important Point: the rising costs of transmission, distribution, and fuel costs account for electricity's higher prices. New renewable power generation is now the cheapest option, and getting cheaper. The challenge is delivering that cheap electricity to customers.
thecarbonista 8mo ago
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- bakies 8mo ago
  Laughable statement https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/feb/13/elon-musk-xai-datacenters-air-pollution-mississippi https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/feb/13/elon-mus... https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jan/15/elon-musk-xai-datacenter-memphis https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jan/15/elon-musk...
  - thecarbonista 8mo ago
    [dead]
    - bakies 8mo ago
      Good one, shill
      - thecarbonista 8mo ago
        [dead]
        bakies 8mo ago
        huh?
1970-01-01 8mo ago
You can buy solar panels and mitigate your future costs today. Start with plug-in solar if you're curious.
m3kw9 8mo ago
Bare cost? They used energy for free before?
ChoGGi 8mo ago
Oooh, pledges; just what corporations excel at. I'm sure we'll be hearing all about how much this benefits households in the coming months and years.
overfeed 8mo ago
Mark Zuckerberg, also at the White House in 2025, as caught by a hot mic: "Sorry, I wasn't ready... I wasn't sure what number you wanted to go with." The pledge is meaningless political theater meant to placate voters in the mid-terms.

185 points by geox 8mo ago

deleted 8mo ago

[deleted]

stevefan1999 8mo ago

Stealing from the people; enriching myself

techblueberry 8mo ago

[flagged]

thejazzman 8mo ago
considering how we uphold treaties im not sure the terminology matters one way or the other
vjvjvjvjghv 8mo ago
It's a PR exercise that makes both the companies and the administration feel good. Not more. There will be no or just cosmetic change.
AdieuToLogic 8mo ago
Using Claude to provide a legal definition of "pledge" is unconvincing at best. > What are the legal protections of a “pledge”? To answer that question is to first agree upon the legal definition of "pledge": pledge v. to deposit personal property as security for a personal loan of money. If the loan is not repaid when due, the personal property pledged shall be forfeit to the lender. The property is known as collateral. To pledge is the same as to pawn. 2) to promise to do something.[0] Without careful review of the document signed, it is impossible to verify which form of the above is applicable in this case. > A pledge is a public commitment or statement of intent, not a binding legal contract. This very well may be incorrect in this context and serves an exemplar as to why relying upon statistical document generation is not a recommended legal strategy. 0 - https://dictionary.law.com/Default.aspx?selected=1544 https://dictionary.law.com/Default.aspx?selected=1544
- techblueberry 8mo ago
  Wait, we know it’s not your definition, because it’s inapplicable.
  - AdieuToLogic 8mo ago
    > Wait, we know it’s not your definition ... Of course it is not "my definition", as I cited the source of it. > ... because it’s inapplicable. Take that up with law.com.
    - staticman2 8mo ago
      Your goal seemed to be to fact check Claude. I'm not sure why your failure to do so should be taken up with law.com? Law.com's first definition is inapplicable. That leaves us with the second definition, which says nothing about whether a pledge is legally binding.
      - AdieuToLogic 8mo ago
        > Your goal seemed to be to fact check Claude. No, this is not my goal. My goal was to illuminate that Claude is a product which produces the most statistically relevant content to a prompt submitted therein. > I'm not sure why your failure to do so should be taken up with law.com? The post to which I originally replied cited "Claude" as if it were an authoritative source. To which I disagreed and then provided a definition from law.com. Where is my failure? > Law.com's first definition is inapplicable. From the article: The pledge includes a commitment by technology companies to bring or buy electricity supplies for their datacenters, either from new power plants or existing plants with expanded output capacity. It also includes commitments from big tech to pay for upgrades to power delivery systems and to enter special electricity rate agreements with utilities.[0] > That leaves us with the second definition, which says nothing about whether a pledge is legally binding. To which I originally wrote: Without careful review of the document signed, it is impossible to verify which form of the above is applicable in this case. 0 - https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/mar/04/us-tech-companies-energy-cost-pledge-white-house https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/mar/04/us-tech-comp...
SpicyLemonZest 8mo ago
I don't think there's any mechanism in US law for anyone to make a binding promise about terms they plan to include in contracts they might sign with unspecified local governments in the future. Congress could pass a new law requiring it, of course, but I think we all understand that this would not accomplish the administration's real goal of letting Trump prove he's the specialest boy and everyone has to give him what he wants.
- glaucon 8mo ago
  | Congress could pass a new law requiring it, of course, but I think we all understand that this would not accomplish the administration's real goal of letting Trump prove he's the specialest boy and everyone has to give him what he wants. ... plus it would require "tech firms" to actually modify their behaviour and that would never do.
Freedom2 8mo ago
I'd be cautious about using Claude, given that they're designated as a supply chain risk by the US Government. Why not use the approved and officially certified ChatGPT instead?
- XorNot 8mo ago
  I'm assuming there's a missing /s tag there.
mattas 8mo ago
Pledges are somewhere between a pinky swear and a high five.
- washadjeffmad 8mo ago
  Fingers crossed spit shake
drak0n1c 8mo ago
Most forms of company civic greatness in the past were essentially pledges, much of the time unspoken. It's certainly possible, we don't need to be cynical.
- techblueberry 8mo ago
  The thing about the old days is, they’s the old days. And yes this particular group of professional liars provide every reason to be cynical.
- magicalist 8mo ago
  > Most forms of company civic greatness in the past were essentially pledges, much of the time unspoken. You're looking at the the conditional the wrong way. You want to look at how often pledges lead to "company civic greatness" (or even, you know, anything net positive) to start guessing at the value of a given pledge.
deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]
lurk2 8mo ago
You can just use a traditional search engine for this. I have no interest in reading your LLM output.
AnthonyMouse 8mo ago
> Wait a “pledge”? What are the legal protections of a “pledge”? That's the boring part until you look at what they're promising to do. It's not as if existing data centers were getting power by sending a masked rogue to climb the utility pole, tap the lines and bypass the electric meter. Paying for electricity is the thing they were going to do anyway. Likewise, paying for "new generation capacity" is the thing they were probably going to do regardless, because colocating large data centers with power plants saves the expense of power transmission which lowers their costs. And as the article alludes to, the real question is when? In general you can build a data center faster than you can build a power plant, which is exactly the reason data centers can cause short-term electricity prices to increase. They temporarily cause demand to exceed supply until supply has time to catch up. So on the one hand the whole issue is kind of meh because it was only ever going to be a temporary price increase anyway, and on the other hand having them build power plants at the same rate anybody else is building power plants doesn't actually change anything or address the temporary shortfall. (If you really want to solve it, find a way to build power generation capacity faster.) And then it doesn't matter if you can enforce the promise because they're just promising to do things they were going to do anyway.
- mr_toad 8mo ago
  > And as the article alludes to, the real question is when? In general you can build a data center faster than you can build a power plant, which is exactly the reason data centers can cause short-term electricity prices to increase. Musk is bringing turbines in on trailers. They’re not even bothering with permits. This is getting really wild west. https://electrek.co/2026/03/03/elon-musk-xai-data-center-undoing-tesla-climate-gains/ https://electrek.co/2026/03/03/elon-musk-xai-data-center-und...

pcdoodle 8mo ago

[dead]

cs702 8mo ago

"The invisible hand" of free markets has become truly invisible...

fulafel 8mo ago

Does it include externalities (co2 emissions)? Increasing natural gas generation is of course disastrous policy with a major death toll from the climate disaster, there needs to be a rampdown of fossils use and production.

deaux 8mo ago
Strange downvotes for a relevant question.
warkdarrior 8mo ago
There are no such things as CO2 emissions in this administration. Your AI chatbots will be powered by clean coal and you'll enjoy it!
- cyrusradfar 8mo ago
  /s this guy gets it. Thank you, finally speaking my language
- rob74 8mo ago
  They have a cute mascot, so it can't be that bad: https://www.msn.com/en-us/lifestyle/lifestyle-buzz/meet-coalie-the-cute-mascot-of-beautiful-clean-coal/ar-AA1VTlDY https://www.msn.com/en-us/lifestyle/lifestyle-buzz/meet-coal... Actually, the tweet quoted in the article is firmly in the "you can't make this $%&/ up" category...
- thegreatpeter 8mo ago
  So you believe Microsoft will start opening up coal plants again and not nuclear?
  - dathinab 8mo ago
    Nuclear power is a pain to build and maintain and un-build once it gets to old to reliable run it (the later part is commonly overlooked in cost calculations). It is also a ~50 year investment. This makes it not very attractive for companies and is why most nuclear power is state sub-ventioned. Theoretically the US had something similar to a state bank to help companies to finance exactly such projects, but Trump/DOGE defounded it for publicity reasons which makes it even less likely for private nuclear power plants. Many "we will use nuclear power" statements do rely on mini reactors. But AFIK pretty much all mini reactor projects have ended in dead ends so far. With promised at best working out on paper (and quite often not even there). So my guess is: They will claim they want to use Nuclear and might even intend to do so. But in the end look at their balance sheets and risk calculation and go "nah, lets do coal/gas/oil". There probably will be some single public co-investment into a nuclear power plant which "happens" to also be government sponsored to keep up the pretense.

deadbolt 8mo ago

We're all gonna end up paying for this and everyone involved knows it.

beloch 8mo ago
Public investment yields private dividends.
- Xunjin 8mo ago
  “Socialize the losses, privatize the profits”.
testing22321 8mo ago
I covered my house in solar panels so it’s all irrelevant now. Soon I’ll get a used EV and cover the garage in panels too so I don’t have to care about wars causing surges in gas prices either.

mcs5280 8mo ago

Non-binding and voluntary = a bunch of lip service

Drunkfoowl 8mo ago

[dead]

SilverElfin 8mo ago

Do they pledge the costs of noise pollution and damage to water sources? Let’s be honest - these pledges are theater that reflects an agreement between tech oligarchs and the Trump administration. The pay the bribes via donations or whatever, and get back this deceptive theater show.

powerpcmac 8mo ago

The only people who believes corpo jackoffery these days are either boomers or people investing their remaining money in big line go up

h4kunamata 8mo ago

This is USA so we all know that those techs companies won't pay a cent back at the end, but the population will.

bpodgursky 8mo ago
The tech companies don't really have any issue paying for the capacity, this is a negligible cost compared to the compute capital, they just want streamlined regulatory approvals to bring the plants online.
- NegativeK 8mo ago
  > The tech companies don't really have any issue paying It reduces profit.
  - bpodgursky 8mo ago
    Wrong, using grid power without adding capacity will result in tech companies paying more for electricity too. They want to add capacity.
    - softfalcon 8mo ago
      Are you absolutely sure they don't want us to add the capacity for them with a pathway for further government subsidies? Almost everything in tech has been subsidized in one way or another via tax avoidance schemes or outright lobbying and manipulation of the market. Why would this be any different?

7thpower 8mo ago

Even if the pledges are in good faith, people are being naive about how utilities work. The general goal for utilities has been to pursue the next “thing” and work toward some sort of regulation to lock in demand, which can be used as a lever to seek price increases and consolidate. If there’s margin to be had, the utilities will find a way, and prices will go up either way.

miyoji 8mo ago

You can read the actual pledge at [0]. The executive order regarding it is at [1]. There's some speculation in the comments about what is or isn't in the pledge. I recommend reading it yourself. [0] https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/2026/03/ratepayer-protection-pledge/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/2026/03/ratepayer-protec... [1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2026/03/ratepayer-protection-pledge-proclamation/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2026/03/rate...

AdieuToLogic 8mo ago
It is important to remember that clarifying the legal implications of "pledge" is entirely different than supporting and/or defending this instance of its usage. One can do the former whilst repudiating the latter and remain logically consistent.
- trinsic2 8mo ago
  I'm not understanding why clarifying the legal implications is important if it's a smoke screen for everyone involved doing what they are going to do anyway. It seems more like a distraction away from the real problems.
dsl 8mo ago
It all seems like a backdoor to let tech companies build power generation on site without all the red tape and sell the excess power to consumers. This indirectly allows them to offload some of the fixed operational costs onto consumers. We just approved the first nuclear plant in 20 years to a company owned by Bill Gates and in a state that has basically nothing but farmland and a Microsoft datacenter. This absolutely cannot backfire. /s
- simianwords 8mo ago
  What’s wrong with this?
  - ipaddr 8mo ago

madhacker 8mo ago

Trump helping tech bros sell more data centers. A pledge is moronic. You pay for what you use since time immemorial. Don't need to redefine existing words with new meaning.

dolphinscorpion 8mo ago

As long as they promised. Their word is golden

bitwize 8mo ago

Some towns in my state are already complaining about the noise from turbines supplying on-site power to a data center that's been built here. They're keeping people up at night. I'm broadly supportive of a "techie go home" movement.

otterley 8mo ago

I find the whole thing a little odd. They’re basically pledging to pay their electricity bills. So what? So does every business. Saying they’re going to pay for generation and transmission adds little. That’s already baked into the charges! It’s like saying they’re going to finally pay for the farmers to grow the produce and the drivers to get the produce to market when they buy apples--as though spontaneous generation and teleportation was ever an option.

simianwords 8mo ago
They are pledging to not only pay for their own bills but rather increase the supply of electricity itself. This will reduce retail electricity prices. This mean retail consumers are paying less for electricity than what they would have paid if not for the pledge.
- podgorniy 8mo ago
  What if they pay own bills (why is this even a subject of discussion?), increase supply (formally), but electricity prices still go up anyway? Just curios if scenario from my descrition even possible...
  - simianwords 8mo ago
    that could happen because the demand could rise even more.
ZeroGravitas 8mo ago
An actual problem was them trying to avoid paying. They'd ask the utilities to make Gigawatts of energy available over the next two decades and the utilities would say "No problem, just sign here and agree to pay for us building out the grid to support that". Then the AI companies said "No we only want to pay for energy if we actually use it, if we go bust or decide not to use the energy in a couple of years we want you to charge all the others consumers to recoup that cost". No idea if that's addressed here. I'm assuming not. It was never clear if that reflected uncertainty about future demand or of they just like shifting costs and risk onto other people whenever possible. edit: the pledge references this problem, whether it actually solves it I don't know.

burnt-resistor 8mo ago

Like trickle down economics? Fool me once ...

yanhangyhy 8mo ago

It feels like ordinary people are becoming increasingly unnecessary. With AI, data centers, and big corporations, they don’t really need ordinary people anymore apart from their own employees. Capitalists only need robots and artificial intelligence to serve them, and ordinary people could just be put in zoos for display.

DeathArrow 8mo ago
>Capitalists only need robots and artificial intelligence to serve them That doesn't make sense because robots and AI won't have money to buy goods and services.
- wolvoleo 8mo ago
  True but they will focus their market on the every enriching 0.1% that will have all the money.
- KptMarchewa 8mo ago
  The capitalists realized that if they literally starve the working class there will be revolution. But if they produce enough so they can sustain (barely) rest of the people with 1% output while they consume 99%, it will be okay. So don't worry, you'll have basic ~~income~~ soylent green.
- fragmede 8mo ago
  People have already hooked up Stripe accounts to OpenClaw instances, so AI's currently buying and selling goods and services.
- mrguyorama 8mo ago
  Capitalists don't care about money. Capitalists collect money for it's power in a capitalist system. If they get "AI" and industrial robots, they don't care that nobody can buy their products anymore because they never cared about selling products in the first place. Right now capitalists loathe that they can "only* collect a 10-50% return on the things "they build", and the rest of the value has to go to the consumer. They want nothing more than getting rid of that "waste", and just having their personal factories create whatever they want and their personal farms making whatever they want and we all just fucking die.

campuscodi 8mo ago

I've read so many of these pledges before.... tl'dr: no, they won't

throawayonthe 8mo ago

oh well if they pledge it's okay then!

mr_toad 8mo ago
They’re pledging to do what they were doing anyway. No one with any sense is building large data centers and assuming the grid will supply the energy.
- harimau777 8mo ago
  Isn't that contradicted by the fact that data centers are increasing electric prices in the areas they are built? It seems to me that either the data centers are drawing power from the grid or the utilities are gouging people. Either one should be stopped.
- bdangubic 8mo ago
  move to northern virginia - the capital of data centers - and see what happens to your energy bills…

bob1029 8mo ago

We should be focusing on how to build large turbines and transformers more quickly. A lot of transmission projects are blocked on equipment. There are warehouses full of photovoltaics that we cant use because of other industrial bottlenecks. We can build an entire PV plant before we can obtain a single custom transformer for a substation.

ourmandave 8mo ago
Fear not citizen! Ya boi Elon got you covered with the new Megablock. Ta da! It's 3 Megapaks wired together with a transformer. Now that's innovation. See? Without billionaires, who would save us from billionaires? Tesla’s Megablock: Breaking the Transformer Bottleneck https://www.rebellionaire.com/post/tesla-megablock-transformer-bottleneck https://www.rebellionaire.com/post/tesla-megablock-transform...

mentalgear 8mo ago

Oh the "pledges" - tell me again how the Billionaire's Giving Pledge - the ultimate "pinky promise" of the 1% - is going? Launched in 2010 by Bill Gates, Melinda French Gates, and Warren Buffett, it was sold as a historic shift in philanthropy. Fast forward to 2026, and the data suggests it’s been more of a "Wealth Preservation Society" than a massive wealth redistribution event. This will be just as trustworthy. We need laws - not merely rhetoric pledges !

nixass 8mo ago

Can I pledge to pay taxes?

throwaw12 8mo ago

> The agreement is meant to help mitigate concerns that big tech’s datacenters are driving up US electricity costs for homes and small businesses Exactly opposite will happen. Reason is, when Big Tech is paying huge amounts of money to contractors to build those power generation facilities and service companies to service it, they will abandon servicing other facilities (remember how Micron dropped consumer RAMs last year because of enterprise demand) or require higher pay from everyone else

thegreatpeter 8mo ago
So what’s the solution? No data center? Let the current landscape of power companies operate as is?
- throwaw12 8mo ago
  Let's make some assumptions first: 1. DCs must be built anyway 2. You can't take away energy from households (3). Highly preferred that you are not going to impact cost negatively to households (otherwise why we have this discussion) based on these assumptions, solution I see is, BigTech subsidising energy costs for 10 years for nearby households (area will be geofenced, e.g. in the radius of 50km), subsidy will be based on the prices outside of that radius. e.g. if you everyone outside of closest DC pays 1$ and in the radius prices become 1.5$, 0.5$ will be covered by BigTech and they're also responsible & pay to setup the system to automatically include everyone in subsidy program, not like you need to apply Also BigTech is not going to build the power generation plants, it must be built by existing processes to minimize impact on pricing
  - PunchyHamster 8mo ago
    Many problems with it: * power generation is not local in most of the cases. You'd be still fucking energy market to anyone outside it * power is also used by companies people actually want. Even if household power cost wont chance thanks to that approach, the price for power for every single business around will increase. * similarly any other manufacturing business will cost more. In essence, the AI boom will reduce profit margin of every single business that has electric power as significant cost in the production. Which is a lot of industries. "Making AI pay more for its useless power draw" is nice idea but it is pretty hard to realise. Unless we start outright denying connection to power grid but that's pretty dangerous political precedent to set.

Joel_Mckay 8mo ago

Much like the price of RAM, SSD, and GPU. The ballooning data-center energy consumption costs have already broken the middle class economic-loop Westinghouse electric drove in the 1950s. Some are seeing their utility bills double. People are not voluntarily going to build things that make less profit. It is a suckers bet assuming the unscrupulous will grow a conscience. =3

NoLinkToMe 8mo ago

I've seen Musk note in an interview that at year-end the bottleneck will not be CPU/RAM etc, but electricity. And new powerplants are backlogged for years. That's why he wants to go into space (10x solar potential because you don't have a day/night cycle, no clouds, no dust/rain, no temperature loss, no orientation issues, and no atmosphere reducing solar). To me it seems ridiculous, for one because sending 150kg to space costs about $500k, and this is about the weight of a solar installation that costs $800 to install and generates about $1000 worth of electricity across 20 years at utility wholesale prices. But suppose it was cheaper and viable, and earth-electricity was indeed capped, you could argue (if you believe the hype) that developing AI is an existential arms-race objective for US/China. But from what I've understood that's just not the case at all. Something like 170+ coal plants are scheduled to be decommissioned, and the average coal and gas plant runs at 40-50% of capacity, because wind/solar is eating their lunch (cheaper marginal $ per kWh). i.e. there is so little demand that these plants keep using less capacity and shutting down superfluous plants. You'd think if experts believed electricity was going to be a bottleneck, that venture capital / AI companies, or even traditional capital, would be buying up plants or signing guaranteed-usage contracts. But it doesn't seem to be the case.

Xunjin 8mo ago
The point of your whole argument is that “financial experts” are always rational and are not affected by bubbles, it took months from energy experts talking with media/investors to the Big Tech would start talking about “energy crisis”. In fact, Nadella publicly stated that he has a large amount of hardware in inventory that has already been purchased but cannot be utilized due to insufficient energy.
- NoLinkToMe 8mo ago
  So why did Nadella not pour a few billion into buying the 50% capacity that the average coal/gas plant has spare, that they're not running due to insufficient demand?

dev1ycan 8mo ago

Everything that the white house says atm, they do the opposite.

dathinab 8mo ago

which means nothing because no one believes there are legal consequences if they don't and there are a lot of ways to doge it even if there where a reliable government in place like especially if they do what they have been doing recently (run their own generator, build their own power planes) a lot of this cost is implicit and as such very dogeable. E.g. higher cost for gas power planes for other due to major increase of demand, higher medical cost due to more air pollution, higher fuel prices, etc. etc. (not even speaking about anything climate change).

cucumber3732842 8mo ago
>like especially if they do what they have been doing recently (run their own generator, build their own power planes) a lot of this cost is implicit and as such very dodgeable. E.g. higher cost for gas power planes for other due to major increase of demand, higher medical cost due to more air pollution, higher fuel prices, etc. etc. (not even speaking about anything climate change). And it's not just data centers, it's all sorts of industry. My local gravel and concrete plants run their "big stuff" off generators because the cost of the utility drop for their amperage doesn't make sense. And nobody will connect the dots between these choices and the requirements we've saddled utilities with. They're spinning up generator not because it's cheaper per watt, but because they're not operating on the 40yr timeline you need to be in order for the red tape you have to go through to put in permanent infrastructure to pencil out. I'm an abutter for a utility project and I've gone to the meetings for and it's an absolute massive boondoggle. My energy bill is going to reflect god knows how many hundreds of billable hours it takes for these hired lawyers and engineers to prove to the system that they're not gonna fuck over any endangered frogs by widening the cut to meet some industry standard that changed over the past N year and dumping culverts and fill in some places where streams criss cross it. Literally nobody involved cares. The abutters don't care. The town wants it to go forward because it's all trivial and it's not like it won't be their ass if they block an upgrade to industry standards and something happens. The system is just going through the motions. The city engineer grills them about petty bullshit because it's literally his job. They know he will and they have the answers but he makes a show out of the subjective things. Ditto for the conservation commissioner. It's like the Israel missiles meme. One side is my tax dollars and the other side is my energy bill. We're all doing this because some slimy politicians wanted to pander to some shortsighted big picture ignoring environmentalists 50yr ago and beurocacy has perpetuated and grown itself since. No public interest is served by this. And the cherry on top is that at the margin, we get shit like generators that don't need to exist because the cost of the alternative is driven up to the point the fuel inefficient (and also dirty) solution makes sense.

jmyeet 8mo ago

This is really a state law issue and there's really no solution for spiralling energy costs other than nationalizing utilities or otherwise making them into state or municipal entities, much like municipal broadband. Take the case of Duke Energy in North Carolina, which illegally raised rates too much. Utilities prices are supposedly regulated but utilities work around this by simply moving costs to things they can charge whatever for (eg transmission costs vs energy costs). The NC Court of Appeals ruled that Duke Energy's actions were illegal BUT there would be no refunds for customers [1], in part because lawmakers passed a law to allow them to do this retroactively [2]. Also, if Duke Energy had to repay customers they can simply raise prices to recoup those costs even though the money was improperly charged in the first place. So consumers will keep paying for the infrastructure to connect up these data centers and will keep subsidizing the ongoing energy costs. [1]: https://www.wcnc.com/article/news/local/no-refunds-for-duke-energy-customers/275-278564ea-d712-464e-b86f-cf57a7ebc001 https://www.wcnc.com/article/news/local/no-refunds-for-duke-... [2]: https://sustaincharlotte.org/press-release-nc-lawmakers-override-veto-to-pass-energy-bill-that-raises-costs-for-households-and-eliminates-dukes-2030-climate-target/ https://sustaincharlotte.org/press-release-nc-lawmakers-over...

LunaSea 8mo ago

The same way Nvidia "pledged" $100B to OpenAI?

cainxinth 8mo ago

Does a “pledge” have more or less weight than a pinky promise?

ModernMech 8mo ago
Depends, were their fingers crossed behind their backs or not?

motbus3 8mo ago

1y from here they will be talking how nuclear facilities are necessary

FpUser 8mo ago

>"The pledge includes a commitment" Pledge my ass. It is either law mandating those massive datacenters absorb the cost with heavy penalties for non compliance or it is just BS talk (what it seems to be at the moment)

Havoc 8mo ago

Like Musk just set up his own turbines regardless of what laws say I can see how big tech is enthusiastic about freestyling this. Eh sorry I mean bear the cost

blitzar 8mo ago

I too pledge to bear costs of energy I use. I was unaware it was optional.

chasd00 8mo ago
hah yeah that's pretty funny. "you can count on us to pay our electricity bill!" - tech companies.

Arubis 8mo ago

I will take this as seriously as any other promise issued at the White House in this regime.

HumblyTossed 8mo ago

I don't believe them. I don't trust corporations. At all. I look back at all the broken promises of corporations like AT&T, all while doing massive stock buy backs, and I simply don't want to hear their bullshit anymore.

randusername 8mo ago

We are creating the final boss of tragedy of the commons. I used to think we were progressing up an exciting tech tree. That seems naive now. Water, land, energy, the soundscape, intellectual property that incentivizes the dissemination of good ideas, digital networks of information and self-expression, perhaps even the economic value of expertise itself are all being sacrificed in the now for promises of utopia in the future. Precious eggs to give to those promising a utopian omelet, eventually.

imchillyb 8mo ago

The way to enforce this would be to provide US citizens with free electric and charge companies only. That will never happen, but would prevent we the people from bearing these costs directly.

PunchyHamster 8mo ago
It would just make other industries subsidize AI datacenters

pacerwpg 8mo ago

I don't care about pledges. Pledges mean nothing.

koolba 8mo ago

We already charge different rates for residential vs industrial water usage. Why not do the same here and simply charge them more? The state could also impose a direct data center surcharge on their usage.

PunchyHamster 8mo ago
Coz that fucks up every industry, even the ones actually useful to people.

Razengan 8mo ago

Wait a minute, so who else was paying the bills?

yuliyp 8mo ago

None of what they're pledging is much of a change from how they've already been operating: - They already invest in new power plants and connection infrastructure when they bring in new datacenters - Electricity for datacenters is based on capacity rather than actual usage - They already have backup generators at most datacenters that they can run during outages. It wouldn't be much work to allow those to feed power back into the grid in extraordinary circumstances - They generally use local contractors to build them for practicality purposes anyway. This is just some fancy PR and nothing else.

Jordanpomeroy 8mo ago

Cool. So they’ll build and operate gas turbines (or probably contract operations to do so) and then drive demand on the natgas, as well as over burden the gas delivery networks.

drooby 8mo ago

The training data commons is to AI what oil reserves are to petroleum economies: a collectively generated resource of immense commercial value. Every book written, every forum post answered, every photo shared, every line of code contributed... billions of people built the knowledge base that makes these models work. Without that collective human output, AI is nothing. Alaska and Norway understood something critical when oil was discovered: if you don't assert collective ownership of the resource before private companies capture all the value, you never will. Alaska amended its constitution. Norway built the largest sovereign wealth fund on earth. Both were acts of people saying "this belongs to us, and we deserve a return on its extraction." We are in exactly that window right now with AI. The resource is being extracted at an incredible pace and almost all the value is flowing to a handful of companies. The longer people wait to assert sovereign ownership over the collective intelligence that makes AI possible, the harder it becomes. If you think this is crazy, ask yourself what’s actually crazier: demanding a share of the value built on your collective labor, or watching trillions of dollars get extracted from it and saying nothing. the idea of Alaskans getting a check just for existing sounded crazy too, right up until it didn’t.

drooby 8mo ago
if you assert ownership over physical infrastructure, the data centers just move to another country or eventually to space. But the model is built on us. You can move the server anywhere you want. You can’t escape the fact that everything inside it came from human minds. That’s an ownership claim no one can relocate away from.
- rybosworld 8mo ago
  > the data centers just move to another country or eventually to space The same line of reasoning that purports billionaires will flee if their taxes go up. Spoiler alert: they don't. Also, data centers in space is not a serious idea. It's been beaten to death that this isn't economical. People like Musk are proposing that as a possibility for the sole reason of keeping regulation away. "Well if you regulate us we will just move into space". They won't because they can't because physics.

buellerbueller 8mo ago

Please Democrats don't fuck up the midterms.[1] Take the house and start legislating in favor of the humans. [2] [1] Narrator: they will [2] Narrator: they won't

trinsic2 8mo ago
Our whole system is a binary carrot and stick. Im not sure we are going to see much change when/if democrats return to power. IMHO politics is manufactured to keep the people placated while the people in power to continue business as usual. If you want real change there has to be some kind of movement from grassroots that ends citizens united and starts enforcing anti-trust legislation independent of party politics. I was looking at this one organization[0], they want to do a constitutional amendment. At this point, I cant disagree with them, but with this administration, I don't know what good its going to do. [0]: https://americanpromise.net/our-plan/ https://americanpromise.net/our-plan/

Aboutplants 8mo ago

Most of these Data centers will be powered by Natural Gas, which flows from production through interstate pipelines, which already are fully subscribed meaning there isn’t any space left. As these data centers come online they will suck supply from these interstate pipelines, drastically increasing prices for all other forms of Natural gas usage (including residential power generation). This has a direct impact on prices for the end user and there is nothing that can be done in time to facilitate this from not occurring. Building pipelines is a long and arduous process and one that will not be done in time to reasonably accommodate the increase in natural gas demand presented by these data centers.

youknownothing 8mo ago

That still doesn't necessarily mean that prices won't be impacted indirectly. Let's say Amazon (or any other AI behemoth) builds a mini-nuclear plant to feed the electricity of their data center (as has been touted). Let's say every one follows suit. That implies an increase in the demand of uranium, which means an increase in price, which means an increase in the costs of the other nuclear plants, which is translated to higher electricity costs. One could say "use renewables", but even that has externalities: that means an increase in demand for solar panels, or wind turbines, or the labour to maintain them, which again leads to an increase in prices.

specialist 8mo ago

Terrific if it happens. I may even ignore the AI (valuation) bubble for the duration. David Roberts (https://volts.wtf https://volts.wtf) has repeatedly noted that AI companies need the power, need it now, and have the capital to get it. So he (and others) advocate that Big Tech fund the grid improvements and new power generation. Point #1 Virtual Power Plants Roberts advocates adopting virtual power plants (VPPs). Think grid of grids, like the internet is a network of networks. Think peer-to-peer energy sharing. VPPs unlock dynamic load shifting, two-way energy sharing (think of all those roof top solar panels and powerwalls), and therefore -- most importantly -- reduces peak demand on a grid which will allow greater utilitization. IIRC: our grids currently operate at 30% capacity (to accommodate rare peak demand events). Grid enhancement techs plus VPPs can boost that to 80% or higher. Reducing the urgency for building more transmission and distribution infra. (In the short term; we still need to greatly embiggen our grid(s).) It'd be kinda amazing if the urgency to build more data centers mooted the incumbent's (utilities, regulators) opposition to improving our grid(s), thereby benefiting everyone everywhere. Tangent: there's a backlog of grid enhancing technologies available, just waiting for funding and incentives to line up. Tangent: VPPs also enable new financial products, which will further accelerate electrification (of All The Things). Point #2 Solar + Battery Solar + battery is the fastest, cheapest way to get new power generation. More so every year. Yes, we still need to massively invest in All The Things to reach Net Zero and beyond. Wind, geothermal, nuclear (fission and fusion), hydro, every flavor of storage, de-carbonize industry and agriculture, conservation, rewilding, and everything else. But at this moment in time, today, we need gigawatts of new generation and the grid that can support it. That means solar + battery. Aside, IIRC, data centers are projected to demand just 5% our electricity supply. So society will be the net beneficiaries (on this axis). Were Big Tech to fund the generation and grid that we need, maybe society will indulge some of Big Tech's less egregious offenses. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indulgence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indulgence Important Point: the rising costs of transmission, distribution, and fuel costs account for electricity's higher prices. New renewable power generation is now the cheapest option, and getting cheaper. The challenge is delivering that cheap electricity to customers.

thecarbonista 8mo ago

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bakies 8mo ago
Laughable statement https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/feb/13/elon-musk-xai-datacenters-air-pollution-mississippi https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/feb/13/elon-mus... https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jan/15/elon-musk-xai-datacenter-memphis https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jan/15/elon-musk...
- thecarbonista 8mo ago
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  - bakies 8mo ago
    Good one, shill
    - thecarbonista 8mo ago
      [dead]
      - bakies 8mo ago
        huh?

1970-01-01 8mo ago

You can buy solar panels and mitigate your future costs today. Start with plug-in solar if you're curious.

m3kw9 8mo ago

Bare cost? They used energy for free before?

ChoGGi 8mo ago

Oooh, pledges; just what corporations excel at. I'm sure we'll be hearing all about how much this benefits households in the coming months and years.

overfeed 8mo ago

Mark Zuckerberg, also at the White House in 2025, as caught by a hot mic: "Sorry, I wasn't ready... I wasn't sure what number you wanted to go with." The pledge is meaningless political theater meant to placate voters in the mid-terms.